Quite a few months went by after that. The tension between us was gone, and the air was more or less cleared.
Nothing was spoken about any romantic feelings each of us did or didn’t have for each other. Right now, it was all about rebuilding the friendship.
Maddie wasn’t exactly jumping towards spending any specific time with me or near me, and I was still happy to just give her the time she had asked for.
The friendship was however on its way to being fixed.
We would chat from time to time and things were cool – but we were both clearly steering clear of talking about our previous conversation in the library.
Even now, all these years later – the memory of that conversation, despite it being somewhat of a stalemate discussion, sticks with me all of the time. It was the first time I had ever been brave enough and open enough to put feelings out there.
Properly.
This was the time that provided me with the second “signature” song that I hold in my heart for Maddie, a beautiful song that was extremely popular all over the world at the time, a global hit.
For me, it just hit the mood, the feeling, and the space I was in – Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting.
By legend, Marx wrote this song in 15 to 20 minutes when he was missing his soon-to-be wife, who was working on a movie on the other side of the planet. Quite literally, “oceans apart” as the song begins. I’ve also heard him talk about how a song he wrote for very personal reasons – (and which he originally wasn’t even going to record) – had become adopted to so many different people’s lives and situations, and with so many different interpretations of the lyrics.
For me, the “oceans apart” was not a physical distance, but an emotional distance.
Yes, Maddie and I had started repairing our friendship, and that was incredibly important to me – but the discussion about “where we were” had been almost ignored every day since our talk in the library.
I was as frustrated as Marx was when he tried to visit his wife where she was working, but was denied entry after flying there just to see her. They sent him home again, and he wrote the song.
One day in the second half of the year, I tried to very carefully open the conversation. I didn’t want to press it, but just wanted to make sure it hadn’t been forgotten about. I still didn’t think it was going to happen between us, but I wasn’t going to leave it to chance and not say anything ever again.
“Hey Maddie, how you doing?”, I carefully asked.
“I’m okay, but I’m not ready to talk about this”, she said, completely understanding what my question was really asking.
“I understand, I’ll be here, waiting for you, when you’re ready”, I responded, cheekily putting the song into the ethos of whatever she and I really were.
She smiled.